Using Social Media to Drive Traffic
You have a website. It’s yours, but right now you’re about the only who knows you have it. There are many ways to drive traffic to it, and social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and numerous others are potentially good places to generate interest in and traffic to your site and content.
If your business is considering using social media to drive traffic, here are a few things to consider as you investigate the possibilities.
Do you know where your audience is?
Social media is not “one size fits all” with regard to driving traffic to your site. Your target market may be on YouTube but not LinkedIn. They may be on Facebook but not Twitter. The most important thing you can do to get started it know your audience and begin to understand where they hang out on line. Once you know where they are, you can begin to build a presence to.
Create a relevant profile
In some cases you will need to decide whether to create a personal or a business profile. There are advantages to each, and you may end up creating both types of pages or profiles. A personal profile will let people see the real you, and offer a sense of intimacy and authenticity. But if you have a purely business-related profile you’ll never need to worry that you’re posting too much business-related info. Make sure your profiles do not use the default imagery; nothing says “unprofessional” like a generic social profile.
Listen first
This may seem obvious, but there are far too many people who are ready to rush into the interwebs and begin shouting about themselves or their business without ever considering a) who might actually want to listen, or b) how things are typically “done” in that particular network. Carefully choose a handful of industry leaders and see how they’re doing it. Watch the popular and the unpopular and pick up tips on what to do or avoid. You’ll have a much better foundation for building a following if you can avoid the biggest newbie mistakes.
Set some content goals
Once you know the basic protocol on your social network, make a plan for, or seed your site with your initial content. If it’s a Facebook page, wait until you have something to draw people before you actually invite them to “like” your page. If it’s StumbleUpon, make sure you are bookmarking sites that are in line with your content goals before you start building a following.
Build your followers and interact
Follow other relevant people within the network. Invite them to follow you. Follow up on questions, thank people for sharing your content, and generally work to be friendly, helpful, and interesting. Funny is good, too, depending on your audience. Find the right balance of giving and getting and you’ll be off to a great start.
